I, Human

by John Nelson

  It was a long day and so I ate a late lunch at the Iguana Café. As I looked over the menu and felt like choosing healthy items, like a whole-wheat tortilla wrap and organic guacamole, I could feel the initial impulse turning negative. I was getting mental feedback not to choose them. Interesting. The waitress came over and I told her I needed a few more minutes. I closed my eyes and got a sense of this input, quieted my mind, and just felt what was now an emotional reaction for about ten seconds before it dissipated somewhat. I could feel some of the energy getting integrated and the rest processed. I opened my eyes, called the waitress over and ordered the whole-wheat wrap with the organic veggies. When it arrived and I started eating, it tasted great but I got the negative mental feedback that it wasn’t as nutritious as the menu claimed. Holy shit, I thought, and I had to laugh at my own reaction. I guessed that “holy shit” would be the result of eating well. Again I did my internal process and the emotional energy was once more somewhat integrated.

  I took a walk around town in the late afternoon, and had the impulse to get my UV protective hat, which I did, but my “mind” was telling me I didn’t really need it. Back at the hotel, I started to reach for my copy of the Hindu Upanishads Maria had given me, but my “mind” was telling to watch the latest video that was all the rage. I made a conscious choice to upload the movie to my portable and view it. It was violent and vile, and while my feelings were repulsed by it, my “mind” was telling me that it put me in touch with my instincts, which was good. Oh, really. The killing of whole populations and subjugating the world, like the hero in this movie, was something to emulate? I quieted my mind, felt how the movie’s violence stirred up my emotions, and I did my integrating process with them. It took a while longer to shift this energy, but while it happened, I again felt the heart palpitations and slowly backed off. One step at a time, I told myself.

  I was scheduled for another biofeedback appointment the next morning but I cancelled it. June called back, and I told her working with the process in the real world was much more fruitful and that I would get back to her. At the library, a flirtatious younger woman caught my attention, and I could feel my primal impulse to “engage” her and my “mind” telling me to follow up on it, that a little sexual escapade was just what I needed. Fortunately, I shifted the energy/impulse before acting on it. I had read in college about addiction and the “addict’s voice,” but this really showed how feelings and impulses can be counter-programmed with mental messages. Since I had never been on a so-called spiritual search, never meditated nor did yoga until recently, never tried to “still my mind,” this was all a revelation to me. I had to ask myself, who was I? My mind or something else—that stillness I felt when I quieted my “mind” and shifted these base impulses?

  I continued the process for the rest of the week, even extending it to my writing, and I was able to get a handle on this darker trend and started integrating these impulses and smoothing out the narrator’s voice. The real test came, however, when Musgrave called me near the end of the week. When I saw his caller ID on my remote, I had a split reaction: part of me was fearful, another part defiant—I paused long enough to do a quick integration of the raw feelings and shift myself to a nonreactive mental space.

  I picked up the call. “What, were you taking a shower?”

  “Who needs to shower in this dry heat?” I replied, without actually answering his question and its implied criticism.

  “Give me a progress report,” he demanded.

  “Well, I enlisted in their apprentice healers’ program and became one of the group, not privy yet to their inner workings, but getting there.”

  “Good. Smart move. I’m sure you can handle the added … load without freaking out.”

  “Well, Maria gives new recruits a private healing session to check them out, and sensed something different with me—with my reactions.”

  “Oh, yeah. Different is good. Might rope her into trying to save you.”

  It was interesting that he didn’t follow up on how my processor reacted, and it dawned on me that he wasn’t privy to this aspect of operation. “Okay, I’ll play up to that, the wounded healer bit.”

  Musgrave paused. “Look, I’ve got an update for you.” He paused again.

  I nodded my head in anticipation.

  “Su Ling escaped from prison, and we want you to keep an eye out. Doubt if she’ll show up there, but she could send an agent who might compromise you.”

  “How did she do that?” I asked.

  “You tell me, Alan. She got minimum security due to the deal with your girlfriend.”

  I didn’t react or remind him this was his doing.

  “So, things are accelerating. We need you to speed up your timetable, figure out what they’re up to.”

  “Okay. Will do.”

  Musgrave clicked off without any polite goodbyes. He was really on edge. I wondered if he was still suspicious of me, or was it the pressure being put on him. It also interrupted my own plans. I had been thinking about asking Su Ling if her people could remove my neural processor, but I guess my personal exploration would need to continue along the same lines for now. But, in a crisis situation, when I needed a first-response reaction and didn’t have time to integrate the impulse and modify its mental feedback, how would I fare?

  Friday afternoon, I received a call from June asking how my biofeedback process was going. I told her just fine; she suggested that I return the next day and have another session with their machine. I told her that I didn’t think that would help; she then told me that Maria thought otherwise, and so I scheduled the appointment. I assumed this was a ploy to get me back to the Institute for a covert meeting with them. I showed up the next morning, and June didn’t take me to the biofeedback lab but to some sort of “electronic” isolation room converted into a living room setting. Maria and Su Ling were inside, along with a nerdy-looking guy. June and I took a seat on a sofa across from them.

  Su Ling couldn’t contain her excitement. She looked at Maria, who nodded her head. “Alan, I’ve got some very exciting news.”

  I looked at the guy, waiting for an introduction first.

  “Oh, sorry. This is Hal Yablonsky, our tech guy.”

  We exchanged nods. “You were saying.”

  “Alan, when you visited the Bradbury Institute to interview Dr. Quirk, you met someone there?”

  “You’re particularly well informed.”

  “Please, just answer the question,” she insisted.

  “Sara Irving, in new product development for their neural processors.” I stared at Sue Ling smiling from ear to ear. “Don’t tell me.”

  “Yes, she’s not so much a plant as a sympathetic party.” She paused to let me absorb this info. “Well, she’s telling us that the neural processor they put into you is an experimental design engineered to integrate more feelings but also to reprogram the mental feedback.”

  I looked at Maria and we had the same idea. “Yeah, I figured as much,” I added, “and giving a person heart palpitations and maybe even a full-blown heart attack, if you fool with the process.”

  Both Su Ling and Hal nodded their heads. Hal added, “We can’t remove the processor for examination—too many telltale signs—but I have developed an advance kind of biofeedback protocol that would allow me to examine it using feedback, without leaving any traces.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “But, first I need to know what you’ve been doing to offset its effects.”

  I gave them a rundown of my feeling/integration process and how I felt it was mitigating the effects of its control functioning.

  “Excellent. But, stop the process until I can examine you tomorrow and ascertain the parameters of its programming.”

  “I will, but let me understand something. Is there some possibility that I can, or we can, reprogram it without their knowledge and have them mass produce neural processors that will aid instead of subvert a higher integration of feelings and intuition?”

&
nbsp; Su Ling couldn’t help but smile. Hal was less enthusiastic. “Let’s see, but there is some possibility of that, but also some serious downside on your part.”

  I looked at Maria. “Let’s do it.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  47.

  We waited until Monday to conduct the session with Yablonsky. He placed me in the biofeedback tank and replaced the Institute’s machine with one that had a different function. He had me put on headphones and explained that he would be feeding me different sound frequencies through each ear. This was combined with heavy-duty goggles, with lenses for each eye that he could switch to different colors or to clear, with magnification for him to examine the retinas. A portable brain scanner was wheeled in and placed over the top of my head, for live pictures of my brain and its internal functioning. Yablonsky said that he would be giving me instructions and asking for my feedback, almost like an old-time eye examination for glasses. The session began and it was hard for me to figure out from the combination of sounds and colored lights, and my reaction to their intensity or the lack thereof, how he could use it to examine my neural processor. But I went along with him, hoping this would answer some of our questions and give us some direction.

  The examination, if I could call it that, took about three hours. Afterward I was exhausted and taken to a room with a bed and soothing lighting and music. I instantly fell asleep and woke up two hours later. June came in and told me that Hal would need another day to process his findings, and that we were scheduled for a get-together Wednesday afternoon and for me just to go back to my normal routine until then. What was interesting was that from the moment I woke up, my neural processor kept feeding me its contrary messages. However, Hal had told me not to integrate the energy but to let it play itself out for now. I was famished and went to the café for lunch and found myself getting conflicting messages about my menu selection; the rice and vegetable dish was nutritious but could I digest it properly? Of course that was the whole idea for this combination of whole-grains and vegetables—it was easy to digest and assimilate. This continued through the afternoon, again forcing me to remain detached and just watch these reactions and messages. But, without my integration process, it was harder not to get sucked into the dualistic internal debate.

  The next day I tried to pick up my routine and write at the cafe, but I wasn’t very inspired and just gave up on it after a while. I went back to the Sliding Sands, read for a few hours, took a nap, went out to the pool and swam, and just had a lazy day, which was unusual for me. I assumed the examination was a real strain on my resources at a lot of levels, and that I needed a break in my routine and not more of it. I was anxious to hear Hal’s results and showed up for our meeting at the Institute Wednesday afternoon with high expectations. When I sat down, Ling was smiling again and I assumed her colleague had already shared his results with her, but this was encouraging. What made her optimistic should be a plus for all of us, I thought.

  “Well, this is definitely a next-generation neural processor, one with both advantageous and detrimental functions.” Hal paused and looked around at us. “First of all, as Alan has noted, it allows more integration of feelings and intuitions but prefers, if that’s the word, raw or primal input, which it’s programmed to alter according to its mental-oriented scheme.”

  “And the heart palpitations?” I asked.

  “Well, when it doesn’t get what it’s programmed to receive, it treats it like a virus.”

  I nodded my head.

  He added, “But, compared to largely blocking out feelings and intuitions, this is an improvement.”

  “And that’s what’s advantageous?” I asked.

  Hal smiled. “No, it also has a self-learning function that allows it to adapt, which is why your altered process gets its feeling input through, as it were.”

  “And the downside?”

  “It has very fixed high-end parameters,” he said.

  “What does that mean, Hal?” Maria asked.

  “Well, there seems to be a fixed ceiling on just how much it will adapt.”

  “Or, it will only allow so much integrated feeling at one time?” I asked. Hal nodded, and Maria seemed to get the picture.

  “But again, since this is living brain tissue, I don’t see how they can be overly confident of these controls.”

  “So Alan could start a natural process, like rising Kundalini energy, that could take hold and go beyond what they expected?” Maria asked.

  Yablonsky nodded his head. “That’s a possibility.” He paused. “What I’d like to test, after another period of Alan’s ‘deprogramming,’ is to have Maria do another healing and see what the threshold is at that point, or when the counter movement starts.”

  “Hal, is this processor more ‘accommodating’ than earlier models?” I asked.

  “I would say … more accommodating than we expected, but then the other processors are breaking down and they need to do something.”

  “Okay. But, how much longer can you stay?” I asked.

  “Not too long,” Su Ling said.

  “It’s Wednesday. How about next Monday?”

  Everyone looked to Maria, who turned to June. She pulled up the healer’s schedule and nodded. “Whatever works for you,” Maria said.

  Su Ling said, “Well, what about eleven o’clock? We’ll go to Sedona. Easier for us to hide there and come back for the session.”

  I looked at Hal. “So, by comparing healing sessions and reaction times, you can determine just how much I can affect it?” I asked.

  “It’ll tell me how fast it’s adapting, but in terms of affecting its ceiling, I can’t be sure.”

  Su Ling stood up. “I think this is very positive. Alan, I really appreciate your cooperation. It could be critical for long-term changes in the system.”

  I wasn’t so sure. There had been so much deception on this mission that this seemed too straightforward and the solution too easy—my process evolves the processor to the extent it allows more integration of feelings and intuitions, without the contrary mental feedback. There had to be a catch that we weren’t seeing, but I might not be able to figure it until I was back at the base and they were adjusting it.

  So, for the next five days, I resumed my partial feeling/integration process. I also kept a journal for Hal as to how it was progressing: how fast the refined impulses got integrated, which allowed more and more input, also what kinds of impulses were quicker to integrate and which ones harder? This was my main focus during this period, although I kept up my daily writing routine, and it was exhausting and causing my muscles to tighten. I told June, and she set up a schedule of daily massage and yoga practice, which did seem to help. But, as the days went by and I started to review my journal and monitored the process myself, it didn’t seem to progress as far or as fast as I had hoped; or maybe I wasn’t gauging it right. Since so much seemed to rest on my ability to evolve this and hopefully have them mass-produce a processor that would help the integration process in others, a lot rested on my shoulders, literally.

  48.

  Monday rolled around and we all arrived at different times, at various entrances but all ended up in Maria’s living room. A chair was placed in the center of a circle of chairs, where I sat and Maria began her healing session. I was surprised that Hal didn’t want to wire me up, but since he had left his equipment here, he could do that later if need be. Maria did her healing ritual and started to channel the energy down into my cranium. We were both surprised when the neural processor allowed a little energy to penetrate its interior.

  “You felt that, didn’t you?” Maria asked.

  “Yeah, it’s moving inside of it,” I said.

  “Please clarify,” Ling said.

  “Before, the processor blocked access to its interior but now it’s slowly opening to the energy, which my feeling integration process must’ve initiated.”

  “This is where it does its programming?” Maria asked.

  Hal nodded his hea
d and Maria continued for a few minutes. It allowed this penetration to continue, if only incrementally, and then it reached some kind of saturation point. It began to counter this movement and I could feel the heart palpitations begin again. Maria withdrew her hands and the energy.

  Hal asked, “So it reached a point where it reacted and threw what I’m calling its kill switch?”

  I opened my eyes. “Yes.”

  Maria walked around and took a seat in one of the chairs in the circle.

  “So, like the input of refined feelings, it allowed a certain amount before reacting?” Maria asked.

  “Yes, which is more than it allowed last time, so this is progressive and is what we hoped,” Hal said.

  Ling looked at Hal. “What’s next?”

  “Well, I think Alan and Maria need to do this dance together for a while yet, trying to push the absorption time longer and testing if that affects the contrary messaging.”

  “You mean, does it change its programming?” I asked.

  “Exactly.”

  “Then what?” Maria asked.

  “At some point,” Hal added, “you need to stop before the alterations become too obvious and allow them to remove and examine it, and hopefully decide to mass-produce it.”

  “What will happen to Alan at that point, once they’ve got what they need from him?” Maria asked.

  Ling just stared at her for a long moment. “Well, if they don’t catch on that we know what they’re doing and are countering it, they could just replace it with his old one.”

  “And if they do ‘catch on’?” Maria asked.

  Ling didn’t want to state the obvious. It seemed like I had to salvage the situation. I added, “It could be that I’m doing exactly what they want me to do, having encouraged me to become a healer and knowing that would expose their processor to this energy, and so I would be rewarded not punished.”

  “Do you really think that?”